Cryptography functions, such as digital signatures and encryption, which used to be exclusive to the PC platform, are now available on mobile devices.

Generally speaking, these functions are similar on both the mobile and the PC platform, but there are certain differences.

For instance, mobile applications can only use cipher algorithms that are supported by the device’s operating system. The list of these algorithms is firmly embedded in the mobile platform.

Certificate storage options available on the PC platform cannot be used adequately on mobile devices. This is why the mobile platform keeps digital certificates in an app-based store instead of the device's system store. Therefore, if you delete the app, you automatically delete the certificates.

You can work with the store interactively. Either you or the user can access it to learn about the certificates or the key containers installed, delete existing and add new ones. The key container is a new mobile platform object.

In general, the container is PKCS#12-standard compliant and can store a private key, a chain of trust between a user certificate and a trusted root certificate, and a certificate revocation list. A simpler version of the container stores only a certificate and a private key.

There are also certain limitations when it comes to adding or removing digital certificates to or from mobile devices, which are determined by the features of some mobile operating systems. For example, the mobile iOS platform doesn't allow adding the same certificate or key container several times even to different types of stores. Meanwhile, the Windows-adapted mobile platform allows deleting only expired certificates and key containers from stores of PersonalCertificates type.

This is a preview of a new functionality. We recommend that you do not use the content of this article as a practical guide to the new functionality. The new functionality will be fully described in the documentation to the relevant version of the software. You can find the complete list of changes in the v8Update.htm file.